


Skinned

by BloodyAbattoir



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Agnostic Character, Angst, Atheism, Blood and Gore, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Graphic Description, Loki (Marvel) Does What He Wants, No Romance, No Sex, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, Trickster Gods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-07 19:30:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19216030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodyAbattoir/pseuds/BloodyAbattoir
Summary: No matter how hard you prayed, or what god you prayed to, there never seemed to be an answer, until finally, you take matters into your own hands.





	Skinned

**Author's Note:**

> Look, if you've made it this far, and still haven't heeded the tags, consider this your final warning. In this, a character literally fucking attempts to skin themselves alive. Not entirely, just partially, but it's pretty fucking graphic. 
> 
> Also, we blend the concept character of Loki from Avengers with the deity Loki, aka deity!Loki takes the form of marvel!Loki because that's what most people identify them/him as thanks to the movies. The whole issue of taking the most familiar form, etc. And of course, marvel!Loki is only a character in a comic for the sake of this story.

No matter how many times you'd prayed to any of the gods, you'd never gotten a response. You'd grown up Christian, praying to the God of Moses, praying to Jesus. Yet, no matter what you prayed for, nothing ever seemed to happen. 

 

Your faith had flagged, and by the time you were a young teenager, you'd dabbled in different religions, trying them on and casting them off as easily as your clothing. Yet, with each new religion, the time you gave the various deities time to prove that they were real dwindled. 

 

Within the space of five years, you'd tried nearly every other 'big' religion outside of Christianity. Catholicism, Buddhism, Satanism, Wicca, Paganism, you name it, you'd likely tried it, with nothing to show for your troubles. Finally, you thought you'd found something that didn't make you feel as awkward as any of the previous religions you'd tried. The worship of the Norse pantheon. 

 

You'd grown up with stories of the various Gods and Goddesses as your bedtime stories, the elves and the frost giants, and you could still recite the names of the Nine Realms by heart, despite not having read any of the stories for many years at this point. So naturally, when you decided to convert, it felt quite a bit like coming home.

 

You felt a strong connection to the trickster god, Loki, in particular. You'd always admired his ability to smooth talk his way out of many situations that should've otherwise ended in his death. The fact that he often bested others with sheer intelligence where tier brawn failed was enough to cement the deal in stone. 

 

For several years, you prayed to the Norse pantheon, with a special emphasis on the trickster. Ironically enough, it was during this time that Marvel had begun to make their series of movies featuring Thor, and by extension, Loki. 

 

Perhaps it was the stunning looks of Tom Hiddleston that persuaded you to continue to pray to the gods. If it were any other religion, you likely would've already moved on, considering that for all your prayers and offerings, you had yet to see a single measly sign. 

 

Surprisingly, you even went as far as to get a massive tattoo of Loki's helmet shortly before your nineteenth birthday. Heavily stylized, it covered the better part of your left hip. Over time, it was slowly tugged out of place by thick bands of scar tissue. 

 

A total of four people knew it had existed, and two of those were from the tattoo parlor you had it done at. It likely could've gone on for decades, hidden and unseen by no more than a dozen souls from the time it was etched into your skin, if not for the events that were about to transpire tonight. 

 

Tonight was the night that you'd finally snapped. 

 

You'd realized that it had been nearly three years of you believing wholeheartedly in the abilities of the Old Gods. Yet no matter how much you prayed, no matter how many sacrifices you'd made, your pleas fell upon deaf ears. It looked like these gods were no more real than any of the others you'd prayed to. 

 

You could feel the chill of the bathtub biting at your bare legs and bottom. Shivering, you fumbled for the flask on the edge of the tub. Grabbing onto it, you tipped nearly half of the contents into your mouth.

 

Some of the liquid spilled out of the corners of your mouth, and what remained in your mouth burned your tongue, your throat, your stomach. It wasn't enough to get you drunk, not by a long shot, but it was enough to wrap your brain in a faint layer of fuzz, distracting you from the worst of your bodily sensations. 

 

You picked up the razorblade and paused, holding it a fraction of a centimetre above the tattoo on your hip. Part of you wanted to simply cut over the ink lining your body. Yet you knew that if you did, the outlines would still be there, the general silhouette etched into your body in scar tissue instead of ink. 

 

You'd need to remove it thoroughly. 

 

As carefully as you could, you carved around the outline of the helmet. After the sting of the blade, you saw the white of the flesh underneath,  before the blood started to well up. It was a fascinating sight, and you almost didn't notice the dragging feel of the blade slowly dulling as it separated your flesh. 

 

Within minutes, there was so much blood that you couldn't see your tattoo anymore. The red liquid coated the bottom of the tub, and you could feel it trickling down your skin. 

 

Technically, the 'easy' part was done. 

 

You swiped your thumb across the mess, revealing the artwork once more. After a pause, you held the blade at an angle, before slowly wedging the now-dull edge of the blade between the layers of skin. There wasn't enough alcohol in the world to numb you out from what you were going to do. 

 

The strange sensation of cutting around the edges was nothing compared to the burning of ripping the top layer of your own skin off. You grit your teeth against the pain, but somehow, even that isn't good enough as you feel every nerve being severed under a dull blade, the endless sawing enough to drive you nearly insane. You're biting down on your back teeth so hard a part of you wonders how you've not yet broken a tooth, and it takes everything within you to not let out a scream. 

 

You glance down at your handiwork, and nearly vomit at the sight. Your skin is turned into several flaps, barely connected to the tissues below. Only in one corner, a small sliver of connective tissue holds the skin onto your hip. Fighting back the bile that threatens to creep up your throat and spill into your lap, you slice at it, sobbing at the pain, until finally, it too is severed. 

 

You tugged at the edge of the skin, and a moment later, the chunk of skin covering the better part of your hip came away in your hand. You dropped it onto the bottom of the tub, where it landed with a sickening splat. Tiny flecks of blood color your skin and the sides of the tub, higher than they should otherwise be. 

 

You look down once more at the space the tattoo occupied not an hour ago. It's a bloody mess, and you can see exposed muscles and tendons. The bottom of the bathtub is coated in blood, and you are feeling faint. You drop the blade, and it makes a faint clinking noise as it joins the mess in the bottom of your tub. Your hand is shaking as you reach for your flask once more. 

 

You are growing weary, and you consider resting your eyes for just a bit. You know that if you do so, you likely wouldn't wake up, but you can't bring yourself to care. At this point, you realized that dying would most likely mean that you would just wink out of existence. It didn't matter. You had no great love for this world, no desire to keep living, no belief in a higher power, or a life's purpose. 

 

 Just as your eyes start to drift closed, your bathroom filled with a strange greenish golden glow. It's enough to make your eyelids fly open, give you a temporary hit of adrenaline. Your first thought flies to your family, but no, it couldn't be them, your mind supplies a moment later, as they were on vacation, a solid four hour drive away, not due back for another day or two. You blink several times to clear your vision of the stars that dance in front of it, and you can't help but laugh. Of all things for your twisted mind to conjure in your (theoretically) last moments, this had to take the cake. 

 

In the middle of your cheap bathroom with the ratty hand-towels that were frayed half to uselessness, tiles that were more at home in the seventies, stained porcelain and a light strip missing a bulb at the end, stood Loki, in all of his glory as dictated by Marvel, the curved horns on his helmet threatening to punch holes into the cheap plaster ceiling. 

 

Rather than laugh alongside you at the absurdity of the entire situation, however, the god, if that is indeed what he is, and not a hallucination, has a strange expression on his face. It takes you a moment to work out that it is a bizarre mix of concerned and furious. Despite being a grown adult, you can't help but feel like a child being caught doing something naughty by a parent. 

 

His eyes travel over your body, and for the first time, you feel self-conscious, hands flying to cover your nudity. His gaze does not linger on your breasts, in between your legs, brushing over them to settle on the gaping wound on your hip. 

 

He takes a step forward, and you instinctively jerk back, slamming into the cold side of the tub behind you, sending a fresh wave of pain radiating out from your injury. Darkness creeps in at the edges of your vision as he crouches over the tub, one hand going to scoop up the flap of skin that held your former tattoo, and by the time it is in his hand, a look of recognition spreading across his face, you are dead to the world. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When your eyes finally crack open again, the blood below your body has dried, sticking uncomfortably, making getting to your feet even more of a mission than it already was. Your head is pounding, and the brightness is almost offensive to your bright eyes. Unable to look at the lights above the sink, or outside the tiny window above the tub, you look down into your lap, willing the stabbing pains in your head to settle down if only for a few minutes. 

 

Then, you catch sight of something that should be impossible, that has you pinching and slapping yourself to ascertain your lucidity. The blows hurt, and you realize that you must be awake, this must be reality. 

 

You'd expected to find an open wound, perhaps a scab at best, if the amount of blood in the tub and your memories of the previous night were anything to go by. Instead, your hip is covered in skin once more, smooth as the day you were born. You look frantically around the tub, catching sight of the bloodstains that came from when you tossed a chunk of your skin into the tub like garbage. The stains are there, the dried puddle from under it is there. There's even the marks corresponding to fingers, too large to be yours, around it, almost like someone had picked it out of the tub. 

 

You could chalk up your memories being inconsistent to your drinking from last night, the blood from self harm of some sort, or even your menstrual cycle. As much as you wanted to disbelieve it, assume you were hallucinating or dreaming the events of the prior night, you realize one very important factor. Even if you had indeed been dreaming, drunk, whatever, it wouldn't explain how your tattoo, the one you thought you'd gotten rid of forever, had changed shape. 

 

The lines that comprised the outline of Loki's helmet had shifted, warped, until they took the form of a rune, Ingwuz. You were being offered a second chance. 


End file.
